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Show o : v""Tr'Jt r r -J s' 2 i t t Editor's note: ' r' The following is a first-persoaccount and commentary from a member of Hill AFB's 3SSth Tactical Fighter Wing. n V by Capt. Scott Hill 421st Tactical Fighter Squadron J It had been three days since the ceasefire in the Persian Gulf, but the party on the streets of Kuwait City was still in full swing. The dancing and singing was interrupted only by the sporadic gunfire of automatic rifles. Guns, which for almost seven months had been instruments of terror and death, were now fired in the air in celebration. guns, which the week before had been fired at us, were now used as an impromptu fireworks display. As Capt. Dave Rabe, a pilot from the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing, Torrejon AB, Spain, and I walked amidst the grateful throng of cheering Kuwaitis, the whole reason for our involvement in the gulf war was poignantly clear. Oil, power and politics were swept aside as we joined with the people in their newly found freedom. We were proud to be Americans. Dave and I are both fighter pilots and had six the last months spent preparing and then fighting in Operation Desert Storm. After two weeks of combat over the skies of Iraq and Kuwait, we were both sent to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to work in the Tactical Air Control Center where we helped translate the generals' wishes into reality using combat air power. At lunch on March 3, we were talking to a general who recently returned from Kuwait City. He said anyone who had the chance should visit there. Being only captains, we gave him that "Well, if we were generals we could" look and expressed our interest. To our surprise, he told us to be at the airport the next day at 2 p.m. A Lear jet, on its way to Kuwait City to pick up a VIP from the ceasefire talks, was our ticket to the former war zone. It was a sobering experience to fly in a business jet over the same territory that just the week before had been teeming with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers with one of the largest arsenals of surface-to-ai- r weapons, tanks and artillery pieces in the world. Now the landscape was completely barren with only the scars of trenches and empty defensive emplacements to mar the unbroken desert. Even the carnage of the bombing and ground offensive had been swept up by the withdrawing allied forces. The skies soon darkened as we entered the smoke from the hundreds of burning oil wells. As we touched down at Kuwait International Airport, thousands of wrecked cars and airport vehicles lined Anti-aircra- ft F-1- 6 the runway and taxiways. The remains of a British Caledonia jumbo jet littered what was once a parking ramp. The control tower had obviously been gutted by fire, and many of the maintenance hangars were reduced to piles of corrugated aluminum and twisted steel. We had no set itinerary for our hastily concocted Operation Road Trip, so we stashed our bags in a relatively intact hangar and set out on foot for the city. I did have a .38 pistol in a shoulder holster, but it was more for peace of mind than any real deterrent to hostile forces that remained in the city. We hitched a ride with a Kuwaiti. As we headed north toward the city, we began to notice the scope of the damage that had been inflicted on the emirate. Abandoned vehicles were everywhere, most stripped of everything that could be removed. Devastation Abdul, the driver, had been in Kuwait the entire time. Because of his age, he wasn't taken by the Iraqis, but he echoed the news reports of the thousands of Kuwaitis who disappeared during the last few months. His voice broke with emotion as he spoke of the pride he had in Kuwait and how his country was systematically looted and exploited. As we entered the city, it looked like it had just been struck by a tornado. Abdul commented on how clean and beautiful the city was before the Iraqi army invaded. Now, debris of all kinds littered the streets, sometimes several feet deep. The buildings were all dirty from the black rain caused by smoke from the oil fires. Many buildings U S Aif totcr Photo Tanks a tot Capt. Scott Hill, 421st Tactical Fighter Squadron, poses Kuwait City. had been used as army barracks or fortifications. The windows were blocked up with concrete bricks with little holes for shooting. Many houses had very recently been burned and were still smoldering. A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant looked completely devastated by bombs and fire. The Iraqis were especially abusive of anything Western. The Emir's palace and the home of the royal family had received even more attention from the Iraqis than most buildings. What could burn was burned and the gutted buildings were used for target practice. What had been beautiful gardens were just more patches of desert. Most of the downtown businesses and hotels had been torched just before the retreat of the soldiers. The boats in the harbor had all been drafted on shore and smashed. The once beautiful marina was destroyed. The beach was littered with visible land foxmines and concertina wire. Concrete holes, guns and tank decoys lined the shore. A tank was upended on the sidewalk. The capital of the third richest per capita country in the world had largely been reduced to rubble. Despite the utter destruction, the Kuwaiti spirit was not dampened. Thousands of Kuwaiti flags hung from every house and building. A week previously, the mere possession of a flag was a cause of death. Now they were proudly hung from the pill-boxe- s, anti-aircra- ft T-5- 5 rooftops. Celebration Soon the traffic slowed to a standstill as jubilant Kuwaitis, their cars bedecked with flags and pictures of the emir, joined in what had become a nightly pilgrimage past the American embassy. As the Kuwaitis noticed us walking on the sidewalk, they were wild with excitement and thankfulness. They honked horns, shook our hands and took our picture. The girls all blew kisses to us and asked for our autographs. One man, upon learning that we flew and knowing of the devastation we had inflicted upon the retreating soldiers, grasped my hand and with tears in his eyes said, "God bless America, God bless George Bush." The resistance and Arab coalition soldiers were almost as happy and excited as the Kuwaitis. In typical Arab fashion, they fired their rifles in the air, often in full automatic. I'm sure they meant well, but several people have died from falling bullets. Near the embassy, an AAA battery opened up with tracer bullets dotting the sky. At least they were firing them over the water. The gunfire reminded us that we were not exactly in a peaceful area. We later learned that a Palestinian sniper had shot a Kuwaiti just a few blocks away. It was getting dark, and since the city was without water or electricity another present from the retreating Iraqis we sought shelter in the Kuwait International Hotel. Before our return flight we explored the airport further. Despite everything we had seen so far, I still wasn't prepared for the wanton destruction the Iraqis inflicted here. Early on, they dismantled most of the equipment for shipment back to Baghdad. They began at. one end of the airport and literally tore the place apart. Every desk, notebook and file cabinet was upended, ripped apart and strewn around. On top of this debris they made their camps. The evidence of their existence was everywhere unheated food, discarded clothing, filthy blankets and human waste in the corners. Evidently, the airport was also the scene of some of their tortures. One part of the terminal contained bodies, or at least pieces of bodies that had been it was too dark for us to there for F-16- s, monj-hs.Luckily- , in front of an abandoned Iraqi T-5- 5 tank in really see, but the smell was overwhelming. The once clean and organized maintenance bays were desdollar 747 engines were trashed troyed. like just so much scrap metal. As we were touring the main terminal, we noticed a few Kuwaitis working in an office. The airport superintendent and manager were both there, so we spent the next hour talking about the human suffering that went on during the occupation. One man had lost his son just three days before the liberation. Another had lost six cousins. Another lost his best friend. Some may be in other countries or taken prisoners of war, but most were probably victims of the Iraqi torturers. They told of going to the the hospitals and seeing bodies mutilated heads cut in half with axes, eyes pulled out their sockets, fingernails slowly pulled off fingers, limbs amputated. They said it was jealousy on the part of Saddam and his army. The tales of looting were just as horrific. The army would go from door to door and steal anything of value at gunpoint. They especially like televisions and video cassette recorders. It's estimated they took billions of dollars of personal gold and jewelry. We were told how the soldiers would get together at the police stations every night and trade stolen goods and put out wish lists for subsequent looting. We learned that during the Iraqi exodus, many hostages, perhaps thousands, were taken to ensure safety out of the city, and then shot and dumped in the canals. It was these escaping Iraqis who were the target of the mass attack on the highway north of Kuwait so well documented by the news media. Once clear of the city, they became the target of one of the most impressive displays of air power since the war began. Multi-millio- n Bombs bring sleep The airport superintendent then drove us on a tour of the airport where we saw destroyed Iraqi armor, found live ammunition in a bunker, and saw evidence of the destruction inflicted by the army. This area wasn't a combat zone. All the damage was done quite deliberately with the sole purpose of destroying the character and beauty of Kuwait. The men told us that if President Bush and the United Nations had accepted the Iraqi proposal to withdraw in 21 days, there wouldn't have been a building standing in Kuwait and possibly no live Kuwaitis. They were so grateful when the bombing started. After that, they could sleep nights because as soon as the bombs started dropping, the Iraqis would cower in their bunkers and fortifications and leave the people alone. They said they stayed up each night until the bombs could be heard and then went joyously to bed. The day the ground war started was the beginning of the end for the Iraqis. Within a matter of hours, they began their withdrawal and the campaign of sabotaging the infrastructure of Kuwait. The oil wells were torched and refineries destroyed. The power grid was destroyed by downing power lines and destroying substations. The luxury hotels and and the downtown businesses were stores looted of any remaining goods. They caused enormous damage and personal hardship, but as the Kuwaitis made very clear, they'll rise from this stronger than ever. As we walked the streets of Kuwait, and experienced the joy of their refound freedom, we felt a surge of pride pride in ourselves, pride in the military, pride in our leaders. Our souls, too, had been liberated. fire-bomb- ed |